About a year ago the central office announced its plan to close the Wilson Occupational High School. The idea was to merge the school for mentally handicapped students with Taft, one of the city’s largest high schools.

Just who supports the merger is not clear, since school officials would not respond for comment. But leaders at Wilson and Taft say it threatens ambitious reorganization efforts at both schools. “No one asked us about this consolidation plan,” says Bill Watts, Taft’s principal. “It makes our reorganization plans more difficult, and it screws up the fine program that Wilson has. I don’t see how it could benefit either school.”

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The showdown reveals that school councils still find themselves at the mercy of anonymous central-office power brokers, even in the age of local control. “Our problem is not with the members of the Board of Education–they have been very responsive,” says Mulberry. “The resistance is coming from somewhere else in the system. And I don’t know where.”

A couple of years ago school officials decided to move Wilson to a building of its own. They found a vacant Illinois Bell facility at 4355 N. Linder, which they bought after a year of negotiations with the phone company.

One day later the Sun-Times ran another article with a revised list. Phillips, Hirsch, and Lucy Flower had been saved. But Wilson was now on the list, along with Manley and Cregier high schools and Schiller and Shakespeare elementary schools.

Wilson’s leaders allied with their counterparts at Taft, who were particularly outraged that the board had not notified them of the consolidation plans. “We have massive plans to do restructuring,” says Bill Watts. “We are planning to establish several schools within one school. It’s a massive project, involving moving teachers all over the place and blocking out different rooms. I need every square inch I can get. Now all of a sudden we’re told to block out 12 to 14 classrooms for Wilson’s kids. Well, it’s not that simple. Here we are trying to improve education and then the central office steps in at the last minute to make things difficult.

Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jon Randolph.